Stutzfamily.com>Travel Pictures

India

Driving through the back roads of
Rajasthan was always an adventure. We felt transported back in time, watching
daily life pass in back roads Rajasthani towns. We kept thinking about
how lucky we were to have been born into our circumstances, and how different
things would be had we 'popped out' in a different part of the world.

Where we had to take (or give) baths in
the street

Or where earning a living was based on
the amount of wood you could carry home on your head. Imagine finding daily
firewood - in a scrub desert.

We might have been born in a place where
daily water - even in town - has to be brought in to our houses for use.

Where making a living consists of selling
trinkets by the side of the road (those bangles typically are sold at about
20 for one dollar).

We might have been born in a place
where cows and cow dung are true measures of wealth. Flattened and shaped
by hand, the dried feces serve as building material and clean burning cooking
and heating fuel. This is (perhaps) one of the lost-in-history reasons
behind the sacredness of the cow in this part of the world, and one of
the reasons that dogs are frequently seen guarding the drying cowpies.

The roadside scenes were just as fantastic
- from Rajasthani public transport (left) to the camel carts still in use
everywhere, and the never ending brickyards and kilns that have stripped
the landscapes of most burnable vegetation while providing jobs as well
as building material for the entire region.

But every home was someone's castle, and
a new appreciation of our own blessings did not detract from seeing the
order and beauty in their simpler lives.